Lucy Stone

Stone, Lucy, 1818–93, reformer and leader in the women's rights movement, b. near West Brookfield, Mass., grad. Oberlin, 1847. In 1847 she gave her first lecture on women's rights, and the following year she was engaged by the Anti-Slavery Society as one of their regular lecturers. As a speaker she had great eloquence and was often able to sway an unruly and antagonistic audience. She married Henry Brown Blackwell in 1855 but continued, as a matter of principle, to use her own name and was known as Mrs. Stone. In 1870 she founded the Woman's Journal, which was for nearly 50 years the official organ of the American Woman Suffrage Association and, after 1890, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. After her death it was edited by her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell. In 1921 the Lucy Stone League was formed to continue the battle for women's rights.

See biographies by her daughter (1930, repr. 1971) and E. R. Hays (1961).